


Your Sweet Goodbyes

by Barkour



Series: Barkour sampler [5]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, M/M, Qun Compliant Bull, The Bad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 07:47:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4779440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That was the night the Bull said goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Sweet Goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for one possible outcome of one storyline in the Trespasser DLC.

The fire had settled to red coal. The Bull stopped beside it, to feed the scrap of parchment to what embers lingered. A sooted spot creased the center and ate out, till the Bull let it drop to ash. 

He stood and undid the harness. The gear thumped noisily to the floor. The clock, ticking steadily on its stand, was outmatched; then it claimed supremacy once more.

In the bed, Dorian stirred. The Bull breathed - rubbed his smoky fingers together - he turned.

"You're back." Dorian yawned. His mustache had rumpled. The dark hairs stuck up from his lip. "Rather late. Early?" He squinted. Sleep lines marked his cheek.

"I didn't mean to wake you."

His boots spoke heavily against the stones. The Bull sat on the edge of the bed and reached for Dorian.

The smile wrinkled Dorian's eyes, so weirdly pale in so dark a face. The Bull stroked a fingertip along the corner of one such eye. Like glass. Like water. He washed his face before bed, once with plain water then with a wet cream imported at expense. The smell of cow's milk and light flowers stuck to him.

Dorian hummed rather than sigh. A habit, assumed.

"Mm. But you did." Another yawn cracked his jaw.

The Bull said, "Careful, kadan. Don't want to break your handsome face." 

He flicked that finger across Dorian's nose, and Dorian, nude of pretense, snorted and shoved at him. A feint. Dorian let his wrist drape over the Bull's shoulder.

"I didn't expect you back for another day at least."

The Bull shrugged, bouncing Dorian's hand. "Good wind at my back. And I had a good reason to beat dirt."

"Is it feast day already?" Another wrinkle at his eyes.

"There you go again," said the Bull. He shifted to face Dorian better. His knee pressed into the mattress. "Trying to draw blood."

Dorian scoffed. "Oh, you love it. Philanderer." Sleep both softened and hoarsened him.

The Bull smoothed his hand along Dorian's jaw, his throat. He catalogued with his palm the broad lines, the weight of the breath in Dorian's chest, the tug of muscle beneath the skin.

"When it's you." Dorian's hand pressed flat to the Bull's nape. The Bull crooked his mouth. "Keep digging."

Dorian exhaled a gust. "Come here," he said, "I've enough of your teasing," and he hooked his thick arms about the Bull's neck to draw him near.

A kiss. A touch. Dorian's breath spilled across the Bull's tongue. He rooted deeper, pulling at Dorian. 

"Take your boots off."

The Bull moved fully on to the bed. His knees framed Dorian. Dirt scattered on the bedspread.

"I want you," the Bull said to the hair curled and sweating at Dorian's temple. "Missed you." Dorian bared his throat to the Bull. "Whole week without you. Just me and my hand."

"I was gone a year before." 

Dorian banished the dirt. His chest, thick through as a young tree, tensed. He rose to meet the Bull.

"So we got lost time to make up." The Bull fumbled for a thigh, to hitch Dorian flush. "Before you go again."

"Amatus," said Dorian darkly. "Take off this wretched belt."

The Bull laughed. "Make me, bas saarebas."

"Oh, it's a fight you want?" Dorian bit the Bull's jaw without gentility. The bone ached. "And what will you do? Bind me? Teach me how to beg?"

The skin under the Bull's hands was sleek, marked here or there with proof of some harsh years. The Bull gripped a hip, a muscular thigh.

"You oughta lock me up," the Bull said to Dorian, and Dorian cackled, delighted, as the Bull stooped to claim what he gave of choice.

As ever before. Steady as the day.

Dorian bucked against the Bull, and the Bull sucked Dorian's coarse fingers into his mouth, and in the end Dorian for all his arguing surrendered to reason. 

The Bull fucked into him, and Dorian said: "Amatus! God! Like you mean it!" 

Another thrust, harder. The hanging ends of the Bull's belt jangled. Again. Dorian convulsed. Sweat, gleaming along his brown throat. The knob moved. The Bull slipped out, all but the head, and shoved in again so Dorian scrabbled for the sheets. Again. Nearer to the edge. Boots, braced in the mattress so he might haul Dorian's hips into place. Again, harder. 

Amatus, amatus. Dorian undulated deliriously against the Bull. He shone even in the blackness of the room, sweat-slicked and fighting for more. Like a fire set without care. He said it without hesitation. Oh, Bull, amatus, you're so big for me, you're so good.

Ecstasy came sweetly to Dorian. His nipples, tight peaks. The Bull bent his head to gnaw gently at one. Suck the sweat from his flesh. Salt on his tongue. I love your mouth, amatus. Your teeth. Bite me. Mark me up, I know you can do it.

The Bull felt the rapid beating of Dorian's heart, that pounding against the Bull's mouth. His hips snapped forward, helpless. Drove his cock into Dorian, hot and tight and turned up to him, till his balls slapped that ass. He said: something reckless.

"Shit," the Bull groaned, "ah, shit, Dorian, you feel so--fuck." 

Balls hot as coals. He beat into Dorian and Dorian raked those strong fingers down the Bull's sides, nails fitted to the grooves between his ribs. Dorian twisted his hips. Teeth in his lip. The Bull staggered. 

"Like--"

"Like what?" Dorian demanded. Fingers cruel and biting at his shoulder now, but he ran the back of the other hand down the Bull's sweating chest, tender. "Like--God! Tell me."

The Bull groaned again, in a sort of agony. He wished he could carve it from his gut. Pull it like rope from his breast. His balls tightened; he fucked faster.

Dorian's breath caught. "Amatus--" His hand fell between them. The tip of a finger stroked the Bull's balls.

"Like you were--fuck--"

He wrapped his arms around Dorian. He pulled him nearer, higher. The Bull could not stop his pumping. More, more, more. Madness. Dorian convulsing again about the Bull. Hot and squeezing his cock. Dorian bit at the Bull's ear, his cheek, the base of a horn. 

"Come inside me," he said, not begging but near to it, "I want--oh, I want to feel your come on my thighs, I want to press it out--"

It was an admission. It was too sore a thing. He said it. The Bull snarled it. 

"Like you were made." His teeth showed. "Like your ass was made for me." And helpless, yes, still thus, as Dorian sighed and came whitely across the Bull's naked chest: "Kadan."

White, then, on Dorian's thighs. The Bull rolled away from him. Be mindful of your size, ashkaari. Dorian rolled to the Bull. He touched his hand to the Bull's heaving breast. 

"Kadan," said Dorian.

The Bull covered Dorian's hand with his own. He closed his eye.

"Yeah."

The fragmentary motion of Dorian's fingers beneath his own. Dorian kissed the Bull's shoulder; and again. His mustache tickled the Bull's sticking skin. 

"Let's get you undressed."

Brace. Boots. Trousers, belt. Dorian wiped the come from the Bull's belly with a length of the bedspread. The clods of dirt were forgotten. As the Bull laid down again Dorian came with him, to nestle to his chest.

Slowly, as if a man in a play, the Bull curled an arm about Dorian's waist. Another sigh. A hum.

The Bull stroked Dorian's bruised hip. Smelt the sweat on him, the come, the cow's cream and the flowers. He thought of the ashes in the hearth. Two weeks, maybe. Three.

"You're right," said the Bull.

Sleepily, Dorian countered, "I'm always right. About what?"

The Bull continued stroking his side. "Tevinter. And going back alone."

A silence, but for the ticking of the clock on the stand.

"Understand," said Dorian, "that I wish you could go with me."

Shadows played across the rafters. The Bull discerned their motions and found no meaning in them.

"Me too."

"And we will see each other again," said Dorian. "There are ways that we can talk. And I won't always have to be at the magisterium, of course."

"Yeah," said the Bull.

"Don't be angry," said Dorian, "you know it has to be like this. If it were possible to--but it isn't."

"I'm not angry." The Bull tucked his chin to Dorian's head. "And you're right. It isn't. When do you have to go?"

"Not for--not immediately." He hesitated; he flittered. Good, to have saved this talk for after. Dorian was calmer now than he might else have proved. "Perhaps two months. Or three. Surely they could survive my absence a little longer."

The Bull swallowed. "Don't put it off too long." He tightened his grip purposefully on Dorian. "Or I might not let you go."

Dorian snorted, but he kissed the Bull's neck in the wake of it. 

"Not a matter of you letting me go or not," he said. "It isn't your decision to make, amatus."

A different grief clung to Dorian. The Bull clung to Dorian, too. He looked at the ceiling. He watched the shadows. 

"I know," he said. "Just want you to be safe."

Dorian traced empty shapes in the Bull's skin.

"And I you, Bull," said Dorian. Emotion throbbed his voice. He husked; he was set in his course. "There is ... nothing that would stop me protecting you."

The Bull smiled. He let a laugh into his voice.

"Sweet," he teased Dorian. "That's one of the first things I ever loved about you. You know that?"

"Oh, do be quiet, amatus," said Dorian. "We'll discuss it more. Later. Right now, I just want..." He sighed. "Let me just have you, for now."

The clock whispered in the dark of the night, the long night, the night that soon would end. 

"As you wish, kadan," said Hissrad.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song "[Black and Blue](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOFNfLMfAAU)" by Ingrid Michaelson, a song that gave me Bull/Dorian emotions long before Trespasser gave context for it.
> 
> Friends don't let friends (the Chargers) die.


End file.
